Your dog walking and pet sitting website helps you bring in new customers beyond your referral network. It's an essential part of any pet business that wants to scale. After all, a website can be discovered in search results for queries like "pet sitting Sacramento."
It's impossible to overstate the importance of SEO optimizing your pet business website.
In this post, we show you example websites and offer best practices for SEO, naming your services, and setting up online booking.
Dog walking and pet sitting website examples
Need inspiration for setting up your dog walking and/or pet sitting website? The following companies do a great job of SEO optimizing their websites, including fun photos, adding testimonials, and clarifying their services.
Extreme K9s
Extreme K9s has a unique brand that matches their offerings. Unlike a typical city pet walking business, this company caters to dog owners with a lot of energy. They do offer regular walks, but their main service is river adventures.
On their website, they clarify the service, handle prospective customers' safety objections, and even show a video of a real river adventure with multiple dogs.
Catbuddy does a great job with local SEO on their cat sitting website. Because they serve New York City, they can't just say the city name on their website. That would mean they would miss out on customers searching for cat sitting services in their neighborhood. On their services pages, Catbuddy makes sure to include NYC neighborhoods to capture search traffic and leads. This website, and it's entire client experience for pet owners, prospective clients, managers and sitters were all created with Easy Busy Pets.
PetWatch916 has a great name that incorporates their city's area code.
They have three services pages, with each offering great descriptions of what that service includes. But the best thing about this website is that it's easy for customers to get started online. They can hit the "Get Started" button to fill out an intake form for a consultation. This website, the intake flow, and the client login portal were all created with Easy Busy Pets.
Alfie Pets is one of the top results for the keyphrase "dog walking Atlanta." They do a great job of using the SEO keyphrase in a natural way. You want to be sure to create a positive brand impression, and not stuff keyphrases in your site and risk sounding robotic.
LA Pet Sitting has named their company the same as a very valuable keyphrase for their business. That's a smart move!
Their website has some other great features too. They directly target customers' needs with the thought bubbles that say "Working long hours" and "Planning a trip."
To connect with prospective customers, you need to hone in on why they hire you in the first place. You also need to prove that their pets will be safe and well cared for with them, so be sure to address customer concerns on your website.
Today's pet owners want easy online booking. Four Dog Adventures allows their clients to book their services and pay for them online. This website, online booking capabilities, and the client login portal were all created with Easy Busy Pets.
Wild Roots Pet Sitting has a simple, modern design on their website. The easiest way to make a site look great is to use a lot of whitespace, which simply means a white background and plenty of space between each element.
They also do a great job with their separate testimonials page. You can create a page on your site called testimonials, reviews, or references. This is an essential part of a successful pet business website.
Do you have multiple service offerings? Give them each a unique name and description. This is sort of like creating an online shop, where prospective customers can browse your services on their own. Some customers will want to talk to you to discuss what's the best fit for their pet, but many would prefer to just look at your website and choose for themselves. It all comes down to buying preferences and personality types.
With a little bit of effort, you can get non-stop leads coming to your website from search traffic. This is much more cost-effective than paid advertising for pet business owners.
Depending on your local market, there could be a lot of competition. The higher the competition, the more backlinks you need. Backlinks are links to your website from other quality websites.
Here's how to SEO your website:
Include one main target keyphrase on the homepage and services pages of your website (be sure to use local city, county, and neighborhood keyphrases)
Drive backlinks to your website by guest blogging on pet industry publications and blogs
Get as many Google reviews as possible to increase your chances of showing up in Google Maps and Google search
Clearly communicate your services
Make sure to clearly communicate your different services and packages. You can make a services page, and include one section for each main service. You can also make different pages for each service and link to them from your main services page.
The value of creating different services pages is it can give you an SEO boost. For example, one page could be Auburn CA Dog Walking and another one could be Auburn CA Pet Sitting.
You could also make different pages for the cities you work in, for example Auburn CA Dog Walking and Loomis CA Dog Walking.
Make it easy for new customers to book online
Depending on their age and tech savviness, many pet owners today would prefer to book services online than to call up (or text) a business owner to schedule an appointment.
You should cater to both types of customers. Include your phone number and email address on your website. In addition, offer a "book now" button that links to your schedule and allows customers to book and pay for services.
You can set up your online booking and payment with Easy Busy Pets.
Your pet business website can be a huge money maker for you. If you create a website with clear offerings, attractive branding, and easy online booking, you're sure to see success.
